The present disclosure relates to age appropriate web page content filtering. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to dynamically generating a web page's “age level content ranking” by comparing content characterization results of the web page's content to age-specific knowledge base information. The web page, in turn, is filtered based upon comparing the age level content ranking to user profile data.
Internet child filters are typically based on keywords and are intended to prevent children from visiting websites that could be considered inappropriate. Several techniques are available that provide parental controls for blocking websites. For example, add-on parental control software may monitor applications such as a web browser or Internet chat application, and intervene according to certain criteria (e.g., a match in a database of banned words). Certain words, however, may have multiple meanings based upon the context in which they are used. As such, filtering web page content based upon word analysis alone may not provide age appropriate filtering.
Techniques utilizing a proxy server are also available that involve a web browser sending requests for web content to the proxy server (rather than directly to an intended web server). The proxy server fetches the web page content from the web server on the web browser's behalf and passes the web page content to the browser. The proxy server inspects the data being sent and received and intervenes based upon various criteria relating to the data. However, this technique also suffers from identifying words that have multiple meanings based upon the context in which they are used.